The Outskirts (Okraina)

Directed by Boris Barnet, The Outskirts is Barnet's first sound film.

This is the tender love story between a Russian girl Anka and a German prisoner of war given permission to work in the village. This love story is made possible because Anka's father's friend Robert Karlovish, a German taught her enough about his country. The setting is the year 1914, first in a total backwater and then, as war breaks out, at the front as well. The plot is simply a series of episodes, initially comic though increasingly grim, depicting the ordinary folk. War is here and the great Soviet Revolution is coming, but people seem much more interested in love and clowning around.